Forest fleet may clean up their gas

District policy would call for alternative fuels

May 25, 2001|By John Chase, Tribune staff reporter.

In what state officials say would be a first for a governmental body in Illinois, the DuPage County Forest Preserve District on Thursday moved forward with a plan to swap its gasoline-powered fleet of vehicles for one powered entirely by alternative fuels.

The swap would involve all of the district's 161 road vehicles, from squad cars to vans to pickup trucks. The district would replace 16 vehicles per year under the policy.

Forest preserve commissioners gave several reasons forthe move, from the $200,000 savings they claim it will bring the district over the next decade to the positive environmental impact.

The district already has purchased several vehicles that run either solely on alternative fuels--such as natural gas, liquid propane and ethanol--or on a combination of one of those fuels and gasoline. But Thursday's measure, passed by a Forest preserve committee, sets as a policy the need to buy only alternative-fueled vehicles.

"We're making a commitment here to do this," said James Healy (R-Naperville), who heads the operations committee that approved the measure and who will sponsor the initiative when it comes before the full commission in a few weeks.

Darwin Burkhart, manager of alternative-fuel programs for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said that if the measure is enacted, it will be a first.

"No other government fleet is made up entirely of 100 percent alternate-fueled cars," Burkhart said. "And no government in Illinois has yet made such a policy decision."

Other municipalities, such as Skokie and Evanston, have bought cars that run on alternative fuels. And Burkhart said the Springfield mass-transit system has switched about half of its roughly 30 buses to those that run on natural gas.

"Other governments have established goals of phasing vehicles out and buying alternative-fueled cars as needed," he said. "None have done what this Forest Preserve District is doing."

Healy said the district needs to push forward with the policy change to take advantage of more than $1 million in state grants and rebates to help offset the costs of building four propane fueling sites and two natural gas sites. If approved by the full commission, the forest preserve staff will begin applying for the grants, which will be available next year.

The district estimates the conversion will cost $1.8 million. With expected grants and rebates from the state and an estimated savings in fuel and maintenance costs of nearly $650,000 over 10 years, the district estimates it will save nearly $200,000 over the decade.

But more than that, said John Oldenburg, the forest preserve's manager of grounds and resources, the switch will signal that the Forest Preserve District is committed to cleaning up the environment.

The cleaner vehicles will mean keeping more than 280,000 pounds of "volatile organic compounds" such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides from gasoline out of the air.

"Imagine a 10,000-ton pile of dirt that is then spread across the county and into its air," Oldenburg said. "With the cleaner cars, that dirt is gone. This is a commitment toward the environment that we are going to be good stewards."